1,000 Jobs to Be Cut by Warner Brothers

LOS ANGELES, September 18, 2014 (AFP) – Warner Brothers, the fabled Hollywood studios, plans to eliminate as many as 1,000 jobs, which would be more than 10 percent of its work force, industry journal Variety reported Wednesday.

“There is no head count target or percentage reduction target,” said Dee Dee Myers, Warner Brothers’ executive vice president of corporate communications.

“This is a budget issue, not a head count issue,” Variety quoted her as saying.

Although the exact number of job cuts, expected to come in October or November, could be slightly lower, the cuts are still expected to be deep, the report said.

“Since I became CEO, I’ve been working with the studio’s senior management team to create a plan to position Warner Bros. for future growth,” Warner chief Kevin Tsujihara told employees in a September 4 email.

“This will require us to reduce costs and reallocate resources to our high-growth businesses,” he said.

The sizable cuts at Warner Brothers, producer of film and television programming, would come as parent company Time Warner scrambles to reduce spending.

Though Warner Brothers has been the most consistently winning top Hollywood studio in recent years, this year it has seen underwhelming returns on Transcendence, Winter’s Tale and Edge of Tomorrow.

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